


Bedshaped

by doujinbag



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Car Accidents, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Loss, M/M, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 18:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3499010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doujinbag/pseuds/doujinbag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been two years since Levi's death and Eren can't stop wishing he was in the ground too. However, something that feels like Levi's presence is keeping that from happening...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedshaped

**Author's Note:**

> So this is really stupid and none of it makes sense  
> I guess you could consider it a drabble because of the weird layout but it isn't??? What is this idk it's just shitty  
> Please please please don't read this if suicide triggers you. Please stay safe.  
> Sorry in advance.

Pain. That was all he could feel. Taking over his legs, his chest, burning in his veins and making time go slower yet far too fast at the same time. He couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, the doctors were talking too fast and the hallway spun around him in fluorescent shades of yellow and white. The overly clean smell of the hospital filled his nostrils, mixed with blood already in his nose, and he wanted to throw up.

He was in pain and from then on, pain is all he would ever feel.

///

"How are you feeling today, Eren?"

A short woman with strawberry blonde hair sat across from Eren in her chair, observing him silently as he hung his head low. Eren still referred to her as Dr. Ral despite the many times she had insisted, "Oh please, you can simply call me Petra." Eren didn't want to "simply" call her Petra. He didn't want to get close with anyone. He didn't need to.

"I feel fine," he said, his voice flat the whole time.

"Are you?"

"Yeah."

Petra tapped her manicured nails on the notepad in her lap and bit her lip, staring down at the notes she had memorized by now. _Eren Jaeger. 23 years old. Post traumatic stress disorder, mild social anxiety, panic disorder, depression. Suicidal tendencies and recurring nightmares._  
_Tread lightly._

"I meant to ask you on your last visit a couple weeks ago," Petra said slowly, "but I know this whole month is tough for you. February is typically a difficult month for anyone as is, but with... you know, _the anniversary-"_

"It's okay. You can say he's dead." Eren stared his psychologist blankly in the face, showing no sign of hurting in his expression at all. "I know it, we all know it. Sugarcoating it doesn't do any good."

"I suppose so, yes, but Eren..." Petra sighed and set her notebook aside to lean forward. "...at this time last year, you were really quite... determined, per se, to put yourself in harm's way. Anniversaries of a loved one's death are never easy to go through. It's, ah, it's rather ironic, isn't it? We call it an 'anniversary' when it's nothing to celebrate at all. That's- that's what you said last time, if my memory serves correctly."

Eren shrugged and put his hands in his sweatshirt pocket. "I don't feel the need to die anymore, Dr. Ral. I don't. I feel like there's... no point in dying, right? That's not what Levi would want for me."

"Ah- exactly, Eren. Good! Good. I'm glad you've come to this realization."

"I didn't exactly get there on my own, but... yeah, I guess so."

"Who helped you, then?" Petra questioned, her tone gentle like a mother's.

"Levi. In general. Just... remembering his voice, thinking of him telling me to stay strong. It's almost like he's still here but he's not." Eren put his hand over his heart. "I guess he'll always be in here."

Petra smiled and jotted a few things down on her notepad, nodding in agreement. "That's a positive outlook to have on the situation, yes. It's always good to make the best of things and I'm proud of you for bringing yourself to do that."

The rest of the appointment went smoothly and Eren managed to successfully convince Petra he was doing... decently, at the least. He drove himself back home with the satisfaction that he knew something she didn't. He _never_ told the whole truth, really.

///

Eren was twenty when his boyfriend died, leaving him with a hole in his heart he could never quite replace. _It wasn't your fault, it wasn't your fault at all,_ people would remind him with pats on the shoulder and pitying glances. _The car came out of nowhere and you had no control over the situation. It's okay, Eren. Everything is just fine._

Nothing was ever _just fine._

Eren spent the first few months after Levi's death in bed, never once moving so much as a finger. He flunked out of college and pushed everyone away from him. Not even his best friends could help him, which was something they had never seen before. Eren didn't want anyone but Levi. He didn't visit Levi's grave like he should have. He didn't curse the driver of the other car, he didn't bargain with God, he surprisingly didn't lash out at anyone else. He merely stayed in place on his bed, sinking into it so much that it left a permanent Eren-shaped indention in the mattress.

That July brought his first suicide attempt. Had it not been for a concerned neighbor coming over and finding him on the floor with an empty bottle of painkillers in his hand, he would have died. He tried again and again, eventually totaling up to six failed tries at death. He unwillingly began seeing Dr. Ral- _Petra-_ in January and desperately pleaded her at first to just let him fucking _die._

It was true that he didn't want to kill himself any longer now; not on this particular day, anyways. It really had nothing to do with thinking of Levi and had _everything_ to do with the actual Levi.

Levi was here. Levi had come back for Eren. Levi was making sure Eren wasn't alone.

Many times over the few weeks before his most recent appointment with Petra, Eren had been tempted to slash his wrists, down more pills, drink himself into oblivion, drive himself into the lake a few miles away from his house. He never followed through with any of this, and it was all because he always felt Levi's breath on his neck, his fingers on his hands, heard his voice whisper _I love you._

Ghosts never really stop haunting, but Eren didn't even want him to leave. He needed him to stay, stay, _stay._

///

Social anxiety began slowly slipping away. Nightmares settled down to maybe once or twice a week, and once again, he could go out with his friends. Mikasa and Armin were quick to reassure Eren that they weren't cross with him at all, that they completely understood why he had done everything he did. Once again, he felt whole. He could breathe.

///

The pain in itself didn't die down, however. Eren could still remember the feeling of being hit by that car, the horrified look on Levi's face only milliseconds before his death. Eren thought he was almost better, that he had been on the verge of recovery, but he was further from it than he'd ever been and he didn't know what he did _wrong._

It was his birthday, his twenty-fourth birthday, when Armin and Mikasa took him out to dinner along with a few other friends- Jean, Marco, Annie, Sasha, Connie, the whole lot of them. Eren forced himself to eat and made sure he smiled his whole way through it. Everyone believed he was so, so _happy,_ patting his back and hugging him and whispering encouraging _"I knew you could do it"_ s. And the whole time Eren celebrated his birth, he was wishing it had never happened.

He went home that night after thanking everyone for coming out with him and made sure to give Mikasa a short but convincing speech on how good he felt, how much he loved her and Armin and how he was perfectly _fine._ Mikasa believed it all, swallowing down every last lie that came out of Eren's mouth like it was candy. She left with a quick kiss on his cheek and didn't hear the door to his apartment lock.

"I know what you're thinking, you know."

Eren groaned quietly and turned around, walking towards his bedroom. "Of course you do," he mumbled back to the seemingly omniscient voice. "You always do."

"You're not killing yourself. Not on your birthday. Not ever."

"Why does it matter? You can't really stop me anymore anyways." Eren unlaced his shoes and stretched out his legs in front of him before standing up and going over to rummage through his sock drawer.

"It matters because I love you. Because death is cold and uninviting and you'd hate it here."

"Oh, what the fuck would you know?" Eren sneered as he retrieved a small clear bottle filled to the brim with a million different kinds of pills from the drawer. "You're just a figment of my fucking imagination anyways."

He walked into his bathroom, avoiding the mirror at all costs. He began to run the bath and waited until the water was somewhat lukewarm before stepping into it, still fully clothed. He peeled off his socks and tossed them aside, getting comfortable in the bathwater.

"This is for you," he whispered to no one but himself. He reached over to a small box on the edge of the bathtub and opened it, pulling out a silver blade that shimmered in the light of the bathroom. He pulled back his sleeve and pressed the metal down into his skin, slowly ripping into his flesh as he dragged it across his vein. "And this," he said, making another line below it, "and _this."_ He raised the blade above his skin slightly, then began quickly slashing at his arm with it, red pooling down his arm and dripping into the water. He had been able to hold back his tears until now, which were all suddenly coming out in violent sobs that shook his whole body. "Why did you leave me?!" he screamed, his voice echoing off the blank walls of the shower, the mirror, the whole entire room. "I needed you and you died, you fucking _left and I can't breathe without you."_

He raised his knees to his chest and balanced the blade on one of them, getting blood on the side of the tub and a bit on the tile floor as he moved his arm around to open the bottle of pills. He downed the whole thing without a second thought, crying and crying and crying out Levi's name again and again. He added a few more deep cuts onto his wrist for good measure and lowered himself into the red water until he could no longer see anything.

///

...and then he woke up.

His wrist had somehow healed quickly, leaving nothing more than a few purple-white scars on his arm as he looked at it. He was still sitting in the water and the pill bottle was empty, but he was... alive?

He looked down and suddenly realized someone's arms were around him, a familiar pair of arms that held him close and kept him warm. He felt so _cold_ otherwise.

"Why did you do that, Eren?" Levi whispered in his ear. "You weren't supposed to die yet. You were supposed to go on and do good things."

"But I'm... alive, aren't I?"

Levi stood up and carried Eren out of the tub. Eren's clothes were still dripping wet but the socks he had previously discarded were nowhere to be seen. As Levi carried Eren back to the bedroom, something seemed different. The entire house was darker, colder than Eren was used to.

"Why can I suddenly see you now?" Eren asked. "Why did my wrist heal so fast?"

Levi didn't answer, simply undressing his lover with gentle fingers and a slow pace. Once Eren was completely undressed, Levi wrapped him up in the blanket and joined him in the bed. He kept his arms secured around him tightly and that was when Eren realized he didn't feel Levi's heartbeat.

He didn't feel his _own_ heartbeat.

"So I am dead," he whispered. "And this is what death feels like?"

"It was lonely for a while. But then you... you did this. You weren't supposed to. You were supposed to live."

"So were you."

"No, the car accident was my time to go. But suicide... suicide always messes fate up. Always."

Eren sunk back into the warmth that Levi's presence brought him, biting his lip as Levi began kissing and caressing every inch of his cold body. They said nothing more, Eren being completely unsure of what he even _could_ say, and soon, there was a Levi-shaped indention in the mattress as well.

**Author's Note:**

> The suicide scene was inspired in part by Violet's suicide from American Horror Story: Murder House.
> 
> [tumblr](http://spookymileskane.tumblr.com) / [instagram](http://instagr.am/and.a.smile)


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